V&A teams with Vintage for Designer Classics

By Charlotte Williams

Vintage Classics is working in association with the Victoria & Albert Museum to re-issue seven of its bestselling novels with covers created by top designers.

The Designer Classics will be published in March to mark the V&A’s big spring exhibition, “British Design 1948–2012: Innovation in the Modern Age”, which runs from 31st March to 12th August. Random House creative director Suzanne Dean worked with the V&A curators to decide on the seven designers and match them to one of the series titles.

The seven titles are each from a different decade, beginning in the 1940s and culminating in the 2000s. The earlier titles are: I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (originally published in 1949) with the new cover, featuring a garden motif, designed by textile specialist Celia Birtwell; The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (published in 1951), with a new look featuring a pack of cards created by interior designer Sue Timney; and The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles (first published in 1969), given a new look by milliner Philip Treacy.

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The Most Criminally Overlooked Books of 2011

  By  Emily Temple

Unfortunately, hundreds of great books come out every year to little or no critical attention, a fate that is perhaps unavoidable given just how many books are published all over the world (hundreds of bad books come out to no acclaim either, but no one really minds about them). Perhaps at the crucial moment, a critic finds himself too busy with the most recent Franzen behemoth or the latest posthumous sensation to notice a little book that flits across his desk, or perhaps (and we know this to be the case) there’s simply not enough space or time for her to talk about every book she’d like to. Of course, for any one person, the amount of hype a book gets is, to a certain extent, subjective — that is, it depends on which media outlets you pay attention to. So in an effort to draw your attention to a few books that we felt didn’t get quite enough hype in the last twelve months.

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Bloomsbury to publish first Angela Carter biography

11.11.11 | Benedicte Page

The first biographical work about novelist Angela Carter will be published in February 2012, the 20th anniversary of her death. The writer—author of such hugely admired and widely studied works as The Company of Wolves, The Bloody Chamber and Nights at the Circus—died from lung cancer at the age of 51.

A Card from Angela Carter (Bloomsbury, h/b, £10) has been written by Observer theatre critic Susannah Clapp, who was Carter’s literary executor and a friend of many years standing. The book will be a portrait of Carter loosely structured around the occasional postcards she sent to Clapp over the years.

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McCartney contributes to veggie cookbook

08.08.11 | Katie Allen

Kyle Books is linking up with ex-Beatle Paul McCartney’s Meat Free Mondays endeavour with a new recipe book which aims to encourage readers to go vegetarian one day a week.

The proceeds from The Meat Free Monday Cookbook will go to the not-for-profit campaign, which is celebrating its second anniversary this year. Set up by the ex-Beatle and his daughters—fashion designer Stella and photographer Mary—Meat Free Monday encourages people to go “meat-free” at least one day a week in order to reduce their impact on the environment, improve their health and save money. According to UN figures, meat production is responsible for 18% of global carbon emissions.

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du Sautoy and Child to collaborate

lauren child

28.06.11 | Graeme Neill

Mathematician Marcus du Sautoy is to collaborate with children’s author Lauren Child as a “super geek consultant” on her latest series of books, titled Ruby Redfort.

The first book, Look Into my Eyes, will be published in October alongside an enhanced e-book. The book features the teenage heroine Redfort, billed as a “genius code cracker, a daring detective and a gadget laden special agent”.

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Faber find the art of Zen in Dibdin redesign

Faber will repackage all of Michael Dibdin’s back-catalogue Aurelio Zen crime novels as B-format paperbacks in March, following the publication of three of them in a TV tie-in in January.

Dibdin, who died in 2007, wrote 11 novels in the series, starting with Ratkind in 1988 and finishing with End Games in 2007, which appeared posthumously in July that year….read more